Eno’s Piss Insured For $5,000?

I guess on Monday, when I said expect to read about Walid Raad tomorrow, I really meant later this week. Sometimes these pieces write themselves, sometimes they don’t.

In the meantime, an additional note on Piss, Hammers and Colored Up-Chuck, a post where I briefly discuss Jubal Brown as an example of equally immature performance to artist Pierre Pinoncelli, a 77 year old neo dadaist who took a hammer to the Duchamp Urinal in Paris last Friday. After I wrote this piece I was graciously reminded by another artist that a more pertinent example might be found in Brian Eno. In 1995, the musician gave a talk at the MOMA as part of a show on low and high art, and contributed a little something extra to the event by slipping a piece of thin tubing through a crack in the display glass of the Duchamp urinal on display, and peeing in it. Claiming to be upset with the way the object was handled (it had been insured for 30,000, an act which would have been contrary to Duchamp’s intentions that the work be some random piece of hardware,) Eno called his act a “re-commode-ification”. Well, congratulations to Brian Eno for reclaiming the toilet, a landmark in the annals of art history to be sure. Here’s hoping the irony that his piss is valuable does not escape him. You know MOMA has that stuff saved and insured in some archive somewhere.